Exercise equipment has been designed to facilitate a variety of exercise motions. For example, treadmills allow a person to walk or run in place; stepper machines allow a person to climb in place; bicycle machines allow a person to pedal in place; and other machines allow a person to skate and/or stride in place. Yet another type of exercise equipment has been designed to facilitate relatively more complicated exercise motions and/or to better simulate real life activity. Such equipment typically converts a relatively simple motion, such as circular, into a relatively more complex motion, such as elliptical.
One shortcoming of these prior art elliptical motion exercise machines is that a direct relationship exists between the length of foot travel and the height of foot travel. In other words, an adjustment which would increase the length of foot travel necessarily increases the height of foot travel, as well. Unfortunately, this fixed aspect ratio is contrary to real life activity. In particular, a person does not lift his legs higher and higher to take strides which are longer and longer. Therefore, a need exists for an improved elliptical motion exercise machine which does not impose an unnatural aspect ratio between stride length and stride height.